HDV 2 SD 2 DVD workflow please.

I have 25 hrs of HDV footage shot on the Sony HVR-Z1 that needs to put put onto DVDs.

Can someone tell me the fastest way to complete this?

Right now what I am doing is taking the HDV footage laying it out on a timeline 1 hour long. Exporting to the HDV as DV footage then able to burn that on a DVD in DVDSP. Because I am not able to take the HDV files into DVDSP and burn that.

The problem is adding a timecode the Exporting it in FCP takes about 13 hours for 1 hour of footage.
Thats killing me.

I believe there has to be a faster way.
Can you tell me how?

Thank you for your help.

Dual 2 G5
3.5 gigs of ram
Max OSX 10.4.6
FCP 5.0.4
DVDSP 4.0.2



SL8UP

I would capture the HDV footage as standard dv. The camera will output HDV on the fly as standard dv. That should save you a ton of time.

You might be able to transfer directly into iDVD without setting it up in FCP. iDVD 5 will do that, probably iDVD 6 will do it even better. Don't know if it will give yo exact time code though.

good luck!

Kevin



"A problem can never be solved by the same consciousness that created it"
Einstein

quickest way would be to buy a DVD recorder.

play out of the camera and record direct to DVD.


nick

Thank you Kevin I like the idea and will use it in the future but more then 3/4 of the footage is captured. So I have to think about that one a little more.

Thank you nick I like your idea but that will not allow me to put Timecode on the footage which is important to the director. I will suggest definitely suggest these options to them

So thank you guys.

Any other ideas? Are very welcome IM still working on this one.

THANKS.



SL8UP

if you need TC turn on the display on the camera.
record the DVD with the camerea's TC display

otherwise use kevin's solution.

simple maths:
it takes 13 hrs to convert 1 Hr
against 1 hr to capture.
(then x Hrs to export with TC, and make a DVD in iDVD or Toast)

HDV is NOT the way to go with this one:
it has notoriously long render times.
and i don't think it's just in FCP.
the problem is it's a HIGHLY compressed file, and a lot of thinking time, via the computer's processor has to go into it

idea:
you might save some time by using an app called QTSync
that'll add TC to your QT file
you might then be able to drag the file it creates into iDVD?

still i suspect creating a DVD from HDV might be a time consuming process, for the reasons outlined above.
glad to find out otherwise, tho, as I've never done it myself.

good luck,
nick

Sounds to me like you should thinking down the road a bit to get the workflow back on track. At the moment its a pretty big log jam.

For example:

What method is the director using to view/log the 25hrs of material?

What does he need timecode for? If he's just marking shots and takes then there are other ways to give him a reference.

What happens to all those DVD's at the end of the day? They may become pretty worthless rather quickly and thus a wasted effort. There are other methods to deal with that too.

Is the job going to be edited in HDV?

What format is the final output destined to be?

Trying to save you some time and effort here. If be more specific, we can give you some farther reaching advice which will streamline things considerably.


Clay

Thank you Clay,

To answer your questions and clear up a couple of things.

I have just signed on to this project as is.
I did not shot or log the footage already on the hard drives. The previous editors did and i do not know them.

The directors have asked to view all the footage on DVDs with timecode and chapter marks to skip threw, they want to do this from their home, and I believe to prepare them selves with what they want to use in the editing process.

At the end of the day those DVDs bounce back and fourth between the directors i am sure they will keep them for future refrance.

The producer is pushing that we edit in HDV IM not exactly sure why. He argues that he spent the money on the camera and wants to do this in HDV. I have explained to him there are no HDV DVDs yet or means of viewing HD DVDs with a player yet. Not cost effectively.
But it starts up a storm and IM so new there I don't want to get too involved. So I just say yes sir, untill i have a great grasp on HDV potential problems.

Looks like the projects will finish late this year and into next year so Final out put I hope is on HD DVDs but then again may end up DVD, its hard to tell.
Any thing else that may help?

THANK YOU.



SL8UP

"So I just say yes sir, untill i have a great grasp on HDV potential problems."

well you know it already: it takes 13+hrs to make a 1Hr DVD

pretty soon the producers are going to get tired of waiting around for that, and then you'll get the blame
unless you explain to them now.
then again maybe they don't have to know their DVDs are made from DV material?

i had a producer tell me not a while back that he wanted his film cut on a G5, (as opposed to my G4)
it wound up being cut on an avid.

nick

Your best quality results on DVD will be achieved by what Nick suggested. Buy or rent a DVD recorder and go straight from the HDV to the DVD recorder. Your only problem is putting time code for the directors. I don't know anything about that, but there were some suggestion made above. If you can get the dirctors to simply note the time elapsed on each tape and some other way of identifying the scenes, you're all better off. In fact the DVDs without the timecode will be worth a lot more as viewable material later than the ones with time code, which will be a source of irritation for the people who put up the money for this movie. The full program might in the end be more valiable uncut than the edited version. I'm not being synical; I'm talking in one hundred years when someone is watching the DVDs -- lol -- just kidding :-)

Ok, got the general idea. Here's what I'd do in your situation. Not saying that this is the best of all possible worlds, but maybe some ideas for you to consider:

>>The directors have asked to view all the footage on DVDs with timecode and chapter marks to skip threw<<

Forget HDV for the moment. And, there's several options to handle things in a more automated fashion. Batch export the masterclips overnight to DV. Bring those back in, and put into timelines. One timeline for each masterclip. Drop on the TC reader filter, resetting the timeline TC's to match the masterclips. Set chapter markers if you must, but I'd keep them to an absolute minimum (i.e. one per scene). Otherwise, you run the risk of the directors getting lazy about notating TC and giving you back a list of useless chapter markers to wade through. Batch export overnight to DV reference movies. Send those over to DVD SP and start burning. For the selection process, settings don't have to be the best, single pass will do just fine. There's also a recent article on that:

www.lafcpug.org/Tutorials/basic_export_files.html

Set up a simple form in excel or whatever for the directors to use during selecting. Something you can deal with easily later. Give them a simple log of what scenes are on each DVD. Ideal would be if the directors or their assistant would enter TC ins and outs into an excel spreadsheet that you could import as a batch list. That would save you a mountain of time in creating a set of selects.

>>The producer is pushing that we edit in HDV<<

It would be a lot easier and faster in DVCProHD. Most likely you're going to be making a lot more DVD's as the edit progresses. DVCProHD 1080i is a frame-based codec as opposed to HDV's group of pictures mpeg codec. It therefore renders far faster, and can also be dropped into DVDSP without having to be converted first to SD. Converting the whole job to DVCProHD from the HDV masterclips is a simple batch export, again, something your machine can do overnight.

>>Final output I hope is on HD DVDs but then again may end up DVD, its hard to tell.<<

DVCProHD would provide both options without any loss in quality vs. HDV.

hth,
Clay